“Some early users of the Touch Cover of Microsoft’s Surface tablet say one of the edges splits to expose a wire just days after they starting using it,” Charles Arthur reports for The Guardian.

“A number of users on the Surface Forums site have reported the problem, which has also been experienced by Tom Warren, a writer on The Verge website and Matthew Baxter-Reynolds, a Windows developer,” Arthur reports. “The defect is identical in each case: the cover, which has an integral keyboard, begins to split at its seam where the device attaches magnetically to the main computer.”

“It’s unclear whether the problems that people have encountered are due to a faulty batch or are a subtle problem that will become more apparent as more people use it for longer- but the fact that users in the US and the UK have reported the problem suggests that it is not isolated to a single manufacturing batch,” Arthur reports. “Microsoft is expected to sell millions of the devices, though it has given no preliminary or forecast sales figures.”

MacDailyNews Take: By whom? Who expects Microsoft to sell millions of the devices? Well, ’tis true that two million units would be “millions,” but that would equal a total failure, so, yeah, “millions of devices” sounds great, but it’s really a failed product. Zune. Kin. Microsoft needs to sell tens of millions just to grab a mere toehold in the iPad market and hundreds of millions to change the iPad market into a tablet market.

Arthur reports, “The split seems to caused by mechanical stress on the cover. One poster on the Surface Forums spot commented: ‘I believe the seam can loosen easily if it’s bent back and you let the Surface rest on your lap (for example, when you’re reclining and reading something)…’ As another user suggested, that suggests the cover is failing in its job as a lid for a device that is designed to be used as both a tablet and a laptop computer.”

I had read that some reviewers (not sure if they actually had one to review) found the Surface ‘exciting’. Now these reviewers can add “electrifying” to their descriptions. Or that users will “get a charge out of typing..”. Or that the Surface will “zap the competition … and the user!” Love it.